November is a sombre month. The summer is done. The leaves are falling from the trees. The cycle of life and death is moving on. The dead lists lie at the foot of the altar in the chapel, and people remember and pray for all those who have gone. It can be a time of…
What is happening at Drumcree and on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown at the moment could lead to cause enormous and incalculable damage to an already struggling Northern Ireland. As the two sides proclaim that the other side is not going to win, the possibility of trouble, of the outbreak of violence which we all…
I was sitting in my Police Ombudsman office after lunch on September 11, 2001, expecting visitors – the American and Canadian Police Chiefs who formed the Patten Oversight Commission were coming to consult me about the progress of the RUC in implementing the recommendations for police reform. As usual, I had the television on, silent,…
How would you feel if, in order to practice your Catholic faith, you had to comply with a draconian series of laws which dictated whether there could be a church, who could be appointed as a bishop or priest, how priests were to be trained, when and where worship was allowed, who could belong to…
When we sit in the warmth of the sun, when we look on a cloudless blue sky, when we examine the intricacy of a tree in bloom, of a single flower, when we look on the face of a baby, we see the work of God and indeed it is good. We are much blessed…
For almost 54 years the families of five people who were shot dead around 10pm on Sunday, July 9, 1972, have fought to establish what happened that day. A short IRA ceasefire had just ended. Soldiers were stationed in Corry’s Timber Yard in Belfast’s Springhill/Westrock area. An inquest a year later returned an open verdict.…
St John writes that before he was arrested Jesus, speaking to his disciples, told them: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus then went on to lay down his life…
People in Ireland and across the world have watched with horror as Ayatollah Khameinei’s regime has terrorised Iran’s people for over four decades, torturing, executing and disappearing people. There has been ongoing resistance by the people. Iran executed over 1,000 people last year, and some 52 already this year – men, women, and children, anyone…
For the past months the UK’s Parliament, like those in Scotland and the Isle of Man has been debating the introduction of assisted suicide. We are faced with a law which says that if a person has a diagnosis of terminal illness and has been given a prognosis of six months to live, that person can…
Last week a judge in Belfast found Soldier F not guilty of the murder of William McKinney or Jim Wray or of five attempted murders on Bloody Sunday, January 30, 1972. Some readers will remember Bloody Sunday, 53 years ago, when 13 unarmed Catholic civilians on a civil rights march were killed by soldiers from…